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Lyonhrt writes "Engadget and Gizmodo have spilled the beans on the news of the new UMD-less PSP Go that comes with 16GB of memory and a slide screen; also among the features will be built-in Bluetooth and an undisclosed memory slot. The console will be sold alongside the PSP-3000, but there are no details on price at this time. This is obviously Sony's answer to the lost battle with the PSP Homebrew and Hacking Communities, which have cost many thousands of lost sales with custom firmwares."

Exactly, I really don't understand why consoles/movies are made with region lockout. Its totally stupid in a global economy, if I want to play a game in Japanese rather than English and buy a Japanese game, how do they lose money? They actually *gain* money, heck, most of the people who import games are the same people who spend tons of money buying and playing games.

If we had the same stupid restrictions on books as we do on movies and games, manga wouldn't have become popular and as a result anime wou

That's not entirely true. While I agree that it's kind of stupid, they do this so they can sell things at a higher price in more wealthy areas of the world. Nobody making $20/month or whatever in a poorer country is going to pay $20+ for a DVD (or Bluray) - this is intended to stop you from buying thing from countries where things are priced cheaper.

There's economics of scale in here. Selling it in all territories for the price they do in poor territories is not profitable. However, selling it in poor territories for the price they sell it in rich territories is pointless because they will make 0 sales.

They can sell these things for barely above the DVD pressing and distribution costs, but they also need to recover the upfront costs of making the movie.

However, the reason they do this is not because it is not profitable to sell it at the same price everywhere, but because it is more profitable to sell it at a different. It's not about impossibility, it's about getting more money. Nothing that wrong with that, though. Except for the region codes -- you want to make more money, fine, but don't cripple my movies for that purpose, thank you.

Then why not release things with only one or two native languages in the poorer areas and release them with all sorts of languages in the wealthier areas. For example, I don't speak Japanese, I'm not going to go out of my way to buy a Japanese copy of a game that I can get in English thats more available. However, I do own several Japanese games but they aren't (or weren't for a long time in the case of Fire Emblem: Dragon of Darkness and Sword of Light) in English anywhere I'm however a fan of the series a

if I want to play a game in Japanese rather than English and buy a Japanese game, how do they lose money?

The company that has bought exclusive distribution rights in the United States loses money to the company that has bought exclusive distribution rights in Japan. This can get complicated in the case of video games based on animated TV series originating in Japan, whose exclusive rights often get parceled out to a different distributor for each major developed country. Or the company with exclusive distribution rights in the U.S. to an underlying work whose foreign copyright has expired loses money to the pu

Not that I necessarily agree with this, but there might be different publishers of a game depending on the region, and publishers want to make sure that if they're selling a game in a particular region, they want to get the sales exclusively.

I wonder, what if it was sold at a profit, how much would it cost? And then maybe the manufacturer wouldn't whine so much about piracy, and the publishers of games can try new models of game production that halts piracy, like regular updates to games similar to valve's steam platform. You'll never get a model that pleases everyone, but you can fight the general piracy of games without a negative lock-down policy, but an open, content driven policy.

Sony just can't make a console cheap enough to compete. Since they can't make a profit on the console, they are entirely dependent on game sales to make up for it. Is it any wonder that they are totalitarian assholes about this?

Their constant bullshit has alienated themselves from a large portion of the market. Even Sony Fanboys will have to admit that Sony makes their life harder, not easier. I do think the PSP is a better console, but that does not m

1-if the firmware makes your current version of hardware better, you're less likely to buy a PSP V2

2-custom firmware and other software could be used to add free software to the console (either legitimate free, or pirated paid stuff) which could mean they arnt getting royalties from games/etc being sold for the PSP

I was thinking the same exact thing.not only that...but it probably positively affect the sales of various munchies and energy drinks as those homebrew hackers need to get their snack-on and their caffeine-on while they code and hack and stuff.

the only lost sales I can think of is with condom manufacturers and restaurant industries as the homebrewers are more like to stay home and code and ignore their significant others.

It loses sales because the majority of people running custom firmware do so to play pirated games. Same goes for the R4 device on the DS. Piracy means less revenue for Sony and less revenue to the publisher. It also means less incentive for publishers to bother with the platform, or if they do to spend as much on development.

It loses sales because the majority of people running custom firmware do so to play pirated games. Same goes for the R4 device on the DS.

[Citation Needed]

Sure, custom firmware can be used to play pirated PSP games much as how a candle can be used to burn down a house, yet that isn't necessarily mean thats the reason for having a candle burning in a house. There are many applications such as Nintendo emulators, etc. that will never be released on the PSP with an official release yet you can get them via custom firmware.

Same thing with the DS, as someone who owns a flash cart (purchased oddly enough at Wal-Mart) there are many, many, many quality applications that are DS homebrew. Some things such as emulators will never be released for it legitimately and there are also many homebrew games that will never be officially released for it.

There is no way of quantifying how many people using custom firmware do it for piracy and how many for homebrew. But common sense dictates that the vast majority use it for piracy.

If genuine homebrewers are shocked by this accusation, there is a simple solution. Disable iso record / playback functionality in custom firmware. Let people build homebrew apps but prevent people from playing warez. Let's see how popular custom firmware is then.

On the DS there actually *are* flash carts that don't have enough included RAM to play commercial games however they can't play some homebrew titles.

But common sense dictates that the vast majority use it for piracy.

But are the developers actually losing money from piracy? Often the people who use and develop custom firmware are some of the people who buy the most games for the system. Then there is the need for legitimate backups of your UMDs. UMDs while protected still are optical disks and as such are quite prone to scratches, etc. If the UMD filesystem isn't cracked

Yes is the answer. You can't assume that if there are 100,000 pirate copies that the publisher has lost that many sales. There are lots of lamers who wouldn't pay for anything. But even if 1/5 of those copies could have been legitimate then that is still a very substantial loss of revenue.

I haven't really been much in the PSP homebrew scene but I know that for the DS/Wii most of the time the real developers who develop the technologies do disable

Yes is the answer. You can't assume that if there are 100,000 pirate copies that the publisher has lost that many sales. There are lots of lamers who wouldn't pay for anything. But even if 1/5 of those copies could have been legitimate then that is still a very substantial loss of revenue.

But similarly there are many cases that people have pirated games, loved them then bought newer games when they came out that were part of the series that they wouldn't have ever bought if they hadn't been exposed to it via piracy. Yes, there will be people who will never pay for anything, but there will be far more people who will use it as a demo service. Not every game system will be pirateable within a reasonable amount of time (such as the Wii which took ages to crack), and if someone became hooked o

But similarly there are many cases that people have pirated games, loved them then bought newer games when they came out that were part of the series that they wouldn't have ever bought if they hadn't been exposed to it via piracy. Yes, there will be people who will never pay for anything, but there will be far more people who will use it as a demo service. Not every game system will be pirateable within a reasonable amount of time (such as the Wii which took ages to crack), and if someone became hooked on a series they would buy the other games in the series for the un-pirateble system. Its the same way with music too.

Far more people will use it as a demo service? How'd you come up with that one? While one can't easily analyze piracy, looking at free services like webcomics show that the vast majority of people who regularly read and enjoy them don't buy the comics. And these are stuff created by small time folks. Games have the additional problems of being created by "evil corporations" which makes piracy practically moral to some, and in the case of handheld games, piracy allows one to carry multiple games in a single

How is that possible? Homebrew apps include emulators such as PocketNES [pocketnes.org], and emulators can play pirated ROMs. Homebrew apps include Tetris clones such as Lockjaw [pineight.com], and The TetriSCOmpany thinks those are pirated [slashdot.org].

If genuine homebrewers are shocked by this accusation, there is a simple solution. Disable iso record / playback functionality in custom firmware. Let people build homebrew apps but prevent people from playing warez. Let's see how popular custom firmware is then.

That's retarded. ISOs aren't some magic pirate-only feature, I bought all my games and I ripped them all to ISO because it's more convenient, loading times are drastically reduced, and the battery lasts longer. So there's little doubt people would use CFW less, but the result would still not be clear cut. There's a good and bad use for pretty much anything.

I was wondering when the "I use it legit, so it's should be a'ok!" rationale would come about.

It already came about two and a half decades ago: Sony v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984). The Supreme Court of the United States held that home users' time-shifting of copyrighted television shows was a fair use, and the sale of Betamax brand home video recorders was lawful because they had a significant non-infringing use.

Face it, while there may be some who use iso loaders in a moral fashion the vast, vast majority simply use these "backup players" to pirate.

And the majority of users of VCRs, DVD recorders, and hard-drive DVRs hold on to at least some recordings for more than a year.

A PSP homebrew program was released a few weeks ago by the name of ChickHEN. It does not allow play of ISOs or PSX games. It's been downloaded thousands of times. I personally use it for emulators and playing Duke Nukem 3D on my PSP and I still buy my games (although I would make backups for logistical reasons if it was enabled).

I personally use it for emulators and playing Duke Nukem 3D on my PSP and I still buy my games

I take it you mean you buy the games that you use in emulators. Which systems do you emulate, and if they're cartridge-based, how did you copy the cartridges to a Memory Stick PRO Duo card for your PSP? For example, what NES or SNES copier do you recommend?

I own a DS lite, and an R4 cart. Guess what game I play most often? JetPac, run on an emulated 48k speccy. Emulation is a massive market that is being left behind by these handhelds. The d joypad and buttons are perfect for jetpac, I love it. That and manic miner, JSW etc. There's a c64 emulator as well but it's just a little bit too laggy for me, although I still fire it up for Uridium or Paradroid.

Not all r4's are for pirate games. I want a decent, open emulation handheld, and the DS is pretty good for t

Honestly, in my experience with people IRL, every single one of them running custom firmware on their DS or PSP uses it to pirate games. Heck, I'd gotten to the point of where I was almost translating "homebrew" into pirated games.

While there might be a small number of people who actually do run custom firmware and don't pirate games, for the vast majority of the public custom firmware = free gamez. Same as modchips.

It's the same head-in-the-sand people that try and say "but but but.. bit-torrent is used for legal purposes!" and ignore that 99% of the bit-torrent traffic out there is "copyright infrigment activities". Yes, the other poster and his 12 internet buddies only use it for legitimate purposes, but the other million people (including myself) pirate the fuck out the games.

I haven't bothered to pirate games yet. FYI I bought mine to be a SNES emulator. That feature alone is what sold me on the PSP. (You mean I can get a portable Zelda: Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, etc.? Holy shit I must buy that!)

Nintendo should blame Sony for millions of dollars of profit lost in lost Super Metroid sales.

I find it funny that running some of the more advanced SNES games is a pain yet PSX emulation seems flawless

For one thing, Super NES games used raster effects more often than PlayStation games, and raster effects need much more careful emulation of the video chip than a simple render-to-framebuffer system like that of the PS1. For another, the PS1 emulator was written by Sony for use with PS1 games on PSN and "repurposed" (Popstation) by the warez kids for injecting other PS1 ISOs. It's no different from the Virtual Console ROM-injection hacks that let you play Goldeneye 007 or Super Smash Bros. (N64) on a soft-m

Sure, custom firmware can be used to play pirated PSP games much as how a candle can be used to burn down a house, yet that isn't necessarily mean thats the reason for having a candle burning in a house. There are many applications such as Nintendo emulators

Virtually no games from the NES's commercial era have been released as free software or even freeware. (Exceptions include Elite.) How many people who use custom firmware (PSP) or an R4 card (DS) to run NES emulators do so only to run homebrew NES games?

In most homebrew circles piracy is frowned heavily upon.

Including piracy of the games that run in PocketNES, nesDS, Goomba Color, Lameboy, jEnesis, SNEmulDS, etc.?

Because despite the people who get up in arms over how Sony is attempting to crush the poor, innocent "homebrew" community, every single person I know IRL who has run custom firmware has used it to pirate games, and maybe an emulator.

And these are very much lost sales, I've seen people go from regularly buying PSP/DS games to not buying any at all once they discovered they could pirate them.:-/

Because despite the people who get up in arms over how Sony is attempting to crush the poor, innocent "homebrew" community.

The point, or I should say the principle at work here is: "I OWN MY *$&#%*$ HARDWARE! STOP TRYING TO CONTROL ME IN MY DOMAIN".

It is entirely a valid principle. It is a fundamental issue of Freedom and Liberty. I know you can say that is an extremist point of view, but I and many others believe that Freedom must come first before all other considerations. You can choose to see t

If you own a PSP (I do) and have not yet seen or just don't know what "custom firmware" really does maybe you should go see..
Custom firmware allows you to turn a stock PSP into something really usable. Everything from real time GPS mapping to SQL management to real time e-mail and messaging apps.
There are several hundred high quality home brew apps and games available. Note these are not available with the stock firmware.
Were it hit sales is in the game area as there are so many home brew games (free)

Without a UMD, how are you supposed to play the games you already purchased? Sony's retard-o-think(tm) and fuck-em-let-em-pay-twice mentality makes me think they are not going to provide a way to migrate your already purchased PSP games to it. You will be forced to rent forever what you had already spent money on to purchase before? Look at all the PS1 titles that you had to buy twice.

While I personally am not terribly interested in it (well, until more details are released), there is certainly a market for it.

The fact that it is download only means you can store a bunch of games on it, so you don't have to lug around a bunch of UMDs. I have a bunch of PSN software on my 8GB memory stick, and it's very convenient. Furthermore, for a new buyer, who doesn't have UMD games, legacy support isn't an issue.

There were also rumors of in-store UMD rippers that would let people rip their UMDs to t

I think they are betting that the distribution model will completely change over the next 5 years or so. Your old psp and the umd's don't automatically stop working just because they released a new piece of hardware. I am assuming that you will be able to download new games on the older psp's as well.

In the long term they want to compete with the iPhone, high end mp3 players and pda's. I think its a smart move, it seems to signal an impending switch to download only game sales, they might be able to come up with a way of using the model to prevent piracy which would make the platform more attractive to developers. Not removing the umd would make the product less competitive in the market in the long run.

As a psp lite owner I think it needs a keyboard and/or touch screen to make it really useful and a threat to the likes of Apple.

Let me get this right. You're saying that people bought these UMD thingies? That's crazy talk.

That's exactly my point. If piracy is as rampant as Sony continually states, then it would really appeal to the very same people that require custom firmware to get the most fulfillment out of their device.

This is what I think the market is:

1) People that have most of their games pirated off the Internet and have them stored on external hard drives and transfer them to 4 gig and 8 gig memory sticks on demand.2) Pe

That's a logical theory. Unfortunately does that sound like Sony at all? They never even tried to give customers the ability to do the same with PS1 titles on the PS2. You could have put a PS1 game on the PS2, which could connect to the Internet, and then go through some sort of verification process that would give you a credit to download the PS1 game on the PSN network.

I think you are confusing disagreement with trolling. I hardly think my previous post was trolling, and certainly not flaming.

app for the UMD-kitted PSP that allows you to pop a game in and link it to your PSN account, ready for download to your shiny new PSP Go.

That's from the poster I replied to. His idea was that you could use a PSP to verify the UMD and get a credit voucher on your PSN account. Thereby transferring the UMD game to your new PSP go. An interesting and

They never even tried to give customers the ability to do the same with PS1 titles on the PS2. You could have put a PS1 game on the PS2, which could connect to the Internet, and then go through some sort of verification process that would give you a credit to download the PS1 game on the PSN network.

Note the important parts: PS1 game, PS2 connects to the internet, then downloads the PS1 game from the PSN network.

No. I am not confused. I don't know why you are having problems reading this.

Note the important parts: PS1 game, PS2 connects to the internet, then downloads the PS1 game from the PSN network.

That's not what I said. PS1 games can be converted to be played on the PSP. You can download them from the PSN network, where Sony has converted them for you. However, you can also do it yourself, but as far as I know, it requires a "hacked" PSP with custom firmw

A better idea would be to team up with a store like EB/Gamestop and allow people to turn in physical copies of the game in exchange for a download voucher. They could even let you download it in the store, through a method also open for regular new purchases so that people with crappy internet connections could do the same. You could have the digital games stored locally, giving you great download speeds.

The PSP Go has no UMD, so what happens for someone who has UMD games already?

I hope that existing users can register their games through PSN. Perhaps a firmware update for the UMD models would allow people to register games online. Alternatively Sony should sell a UMD docking station for the Go and allow syncing that way. The software would have to occasionally re-validate games to prevent people renting / borrowing games but it must be feasible.

It would be very odd if Sony don't offer existing users any migration path

You buy a PSP 3000 then. It says right in the article that they will still sell PSP-3000s side by side with the PSP GO. This is a smart stop gap move by Sony. A UMD docking station is almost absolutely out of the question. Besides, IF they were to do that, they would force you to use a PS3 connected to your PSP.

I don't think it will be a stop gap in time, if they have to create a fake way of making the UMD market look untenable they will and it will eventually become digital only unless the 3000 and go become easily hackable. On the PS3 to do it part - insightful.

I own a PSP 1000. I would not consider buying PSP Go unless there was a upgrade path. I own 20 or so games for my PSP and if I were to buy the new device I would like to carry them over. If I can't do this, then what the hell is the point of me buying a Go at all? After all, I could always slap an 8Gb memory stick in my existing PSP and get the best of both worlds.

If this were a PSP2 then perhaps I might understand, but it isn't. I'll wait and see of course, but no upgrade path means no sale for me.

While you are right, the point i was trying to get across is that there isnt a complicated electro-mechanical UMD loading mechanism anymore. And all Apple has proven is that a subset of people who already had a device will purchase CHEAP games for it. The iphone is not a game console, its a phone that can play some genres of relatively simplistic games.

I realized after i posted the original comment that I wish i could edit it for pedantic fools like you.

Hey, at least I was pedantic for the sake of filling that particular niche of/. culture and not because I find the distinction particularly important - although I would've found a completely solid-state design interesting as long as it's more gaming-friendly than Apple's. It sounds far-fetched but then again the PSP, the NDS and the Pandora also would sound far-fetched if you told someone from 2003 about them. In fact, if there's one thing I'm actually liking about in the current gaming industry it's the t

The PSP Go has no UMD, so what happens for someone who has UMD games already?

Your idea of an external UMD dock seems like a workable idea. Not ideal, but workable. It's similar to a USB DVD drive for a laptop/netbook: just plug in the external UMD drive into a PSP Go, and play games / watch movies as normal.

I have a PSP-1001, and own maybe 5-6 games on UMD, and another 5-6 movies on UMD. (The PSP makes a great movie player on cross-country flights.) I just bought SOCOM: Tactical Strike for PSP, which is only available on UMD. I'm almost finished on my first play-through, and already

I'm sure they've lost a few, but most pirates are cheap assholes who wouldn't have bought the games had they not been able to pirate them instead. I've been around quite a few pirates, most pirates are cheap bums who don't like they fact they have to buy the player/console and get upset over having to buy the "expensive" blank media needed to pirate. Movies and would prefer to use some other persons bandwidth to do downloading if possible.

On the other hand, the "backup" crowd, such as I'm actually a part of, probably spend more on their devices than the normal kid who has his mommy buy him a few games.

I've got around 15 PSP games, I've got about 5 genuine Magic Gate compliant memory cards ranging from 256 MB to 16GB, I bought my PSP 2000 new off the shelf, and I actually have about 1/2 dozen UMD movies along with some various other accessories. Every PSP game on my memory cards were legally purchased, only one used, the rest were out of the shrink wrap.

Considering the tons of music CD's I have all ripped and on my Iriver and iPhone, I would say there's a lot of hot air where the average consumer was concerned. If Sony wants to go after real pirates they need to focus on Flea Markets and the gas stations/etc.... that sell burned CD's with Xeroxed pictures in the cases, not people who don't want to carry a ton of UMD's. Of course I'll admit 16GB on board with digital distribution is a step in the right direction.

Not to mention that Nintendo's DS has been broken for much longer, and has and even bigger piracy "problem". If jailbroken units are the cause of PSP's demise, then you must explain why the DS has not suffered the same fate. Sony just can't come to grips with the fact the PSP's UMD drive was a shitty solution to a problem that didn't exist. It sapped battery power. It was slow. The "cross company synergy" didn't come to fruition. It was a bold move, but ultimately a bad one.

They had to go optical disk, because when the PSP was developed large capacity flash cards were expensive, and what else could hold over a GB of storage. I have a PSP-3000 which replaced a PSP-1001 with a broken UMD drive. I have games on both UMD and a few purchased from PSN. If I had a bigger memory stick, my biggest is only 1GB, I'd try to keep my purchases PSN only to save having to have a large case to carry my PSP in.

This is obviously Sony's answer to the lost battle with the PSP Homebrew and Hacking Communities which have cost many thousands of lost sales with custom firmwares.

How on earth does this have anything to do with the PSP hacking? How does this affect that at all, aside from being yet another revision to hack?The lack of UMD drive is completely irrelevant, bluetooth is irrelevant and having 16GB of onboard flash memory is only going to benefit the hackers if and when they figure out a way to install custom firmware on this.

However, the PSP-3000, right this second CANNOT be hacked or flashed with custom firmware. It's close, recent developments have allowed all PSP-2000s to be temporarily flashed, but as I said this is recent (maybe a couple of weeks? Although the exploit is still only about 3 months old). Sony didn't have to come up with an "answer", they already had one and it took until recently for them to hack it. This summary is useless.

Let them download the same games they already from the e-store for free.

Another idea: An application for the original PSP to let you copy the games to the new system, with full DRM of course. You'd still need a classic PSP to play your games, but at least you'd be able to play them on the new system.

This thing looks like an ergonomic nightmare. The original PSP is already hard to hold for long periods of time, especially if you have to use the analog nub. This sliding screen setup leaves all the controls right at the bottom edge except for the L & R which are still on top. The guy in the image gallery has his thumbs bent in half! WTF Sony?

I use my PSP as a portable video player; and wondered why Sony never released one that hit that market. I rip my DVDs and TIVO'd shows to a MS, and watch them while traveling. 16g built in is more than enough for a few weeks of travel. The PSP has a very nice, large screen that is more than adequate for mobile viewing, is instant o and has TV out if I want it.

I could use my iPhone, but that kills the battery. An iPod touch is a lot more expensive than a PSP and MS; plus I can carry a spare PSP battery.

Homebrew games cost.005% of sales
retail chain takes 30% of each sale.
No Media means that everyone is buying from the sony store -- 30% more money for sony.
No Media means no more used games -- good for game makers too.
The end of the game store is here. Take a picture of Gamestop next time your there -- it wont be there for long.

The directional controls on mobile phones are crap compared to a Gameboy.

Yes but the AC has a point. Imagine an android phone with the directional controls done right. Or maybe an ipod touch/iphone if the holy saints from apple design were to allow such sins to happen. Sony seems to be in a tough spot here. The lack of a 2nd analog stick is making the rounds in the early comments over the blogs that leaked it. The memory chip might be a proprietary sony lock-in attempt, yet once again. You may need to rebuy your previously bought games to play here. And of course it must

Universal Media Disc [wikipedia.org] is an optical disc format used in Sony's PSP handheld video game system. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with Vivendi (owner of Universal Music Group) or General Electric (owner of NBC Universal). A successor to PSP without a disc drive would have to download all its games over the Internet in much the same fashion as Xbox Live Arcade or WiiWare.

Unfortunately that's not a phone. The only open phone (openmoko [openmoko.org]) has 2 buttons : power and aux. Not quite enough for a good game experience.

But, on the other hand, the OpenMoko FreeRunner's Bluetooth isn't locked (unlike iPhone/iPodTouch's) and thus can be use with one of the various [tangshop.com] bluetooth game pads [smarterlife.com.au] designed for phones.

(There are also people using Wiimotes for gaming inputs on PDA/Smartphones, but the lack of grips to firmly hold the device and controller together make it less interesting.)

Unfortunately that's not a phone. The only open phone (openmoko [openmoko.org]) has 2 buttons : power and aux. Not quite enough for a good game experience.

Erm, point and click games work nicely on the OpenMoko phones, it also features acceleratometers that can be used as game controllers, too. The only problem is that the phone is damn slow for anything more sophisticated. And while software can be improved, the hardware sucks, or at least the video subsystem, so you would have trouble with anything utilising the full resolution of the display, for example.

But if the graphic subsystem didn't suck (and SD I/O), it would make a great device for many sorts of ga

True. A handheld gaming console is designed AROUND the controls; it's probably more important than graphics. Most mobile phones would be terrible for playing games, even if they had the equivalent of a PS3 condensed inside.

There's a reason Nintendo dominates the market; they are sticking to the idea that consoles (and handhelds) should be for playing games, and other uses are secondary. There's also a reason that Sony failed miserably this gen, and it closely follows...

Mobile phones are good enough at playing games that portable consoles arent worth it.

As far as I know, mobile phones that play games better than the Nintendo DS are available to U.S. customers only on contract. That's a bit overkill for someone who uses less than 60 minutes a month. Or what gaming phone and what U.S. carrier's pay-as-you-go plan are you thinking of?

It may seem that way to an outside observer, after all, the iPhone e.g. is probably better than the DS in all technical aspects.But for people who really understand the traditional gaming market, there's so many blindingly obvious faults with all devices that we've seen so far, that it's not worth going in to.

One key thing to understand is that what makes consoles successful is a concentrated and standardized market. As long as Apple or other Phone makers show off their technology on contract-exclusive or $

The last time I checked, portable consoles were the most popular in the marketplace, so that might be a reason to care. Also, name me a mobile game that can satisfy someone with an interest in most genres people in portable demographics care about. Good tRPGs on a phone? Sure.

I'm sure this is not the case, but this thing might be small enough that if they position an additional right shoulder button correctly you could use the d-pad with your left hand and the analog stick with the right hand.

I'm sure they'll give you a 2nd stick in the PSP2. Which thing thing isn't. It's just a redesigned PSP. They can't go around adding or removing stuff that affects gameplay without alienating both the current users as well as the developers who'll have to support different revisions of the same console with different capabilities.

Mod parent up, please. It sounds a little trollish by the subject line, but he speaks the truth. I own a GP2X-F100 and they do support homebrew. To the extent that the damn thing actually includes an SDK in the box with the console, and a developer's circuitboard is available online for those who really want to go all out.